Nice time at the canoe yesterday. We had a BBQ with odds and ends people brought by. Down at Paseo we have more people showing up to help with the repairs and we are really making progress. I took my guitar and played a little when the group work was done.

We had steak and fish, some rice with fine dene, fruit salad, and brownies. There were three kinds of fish, unicorn, tuna, and something they called by its Chomorro name.

It was a beautiful day. There were puffy clouds in a deep blue sky. the water varied in shade from tropical green to deep blue. Fishermen tried their skill against the fish while we cooked and worked, scraping wood, applying linseed oil, and carving on the big support for the offside platform.

Have I mentioned that I love it here? I've been trying to figure out why. I think it is a range of things. I could get warm weather anywhere in the southern states (of the USA). But I would still have to deal with people who measure their time as if it was the most important commodity they own, grouchy, hurrying people who can't stand still and enjoy their surroundings. I could get a rural life style pretty much anywhere in the states but there you tend to get a homogenous population, largely concerned with maintaining the homogenous nature of their lives. "Different people" are accepted and even welcomed as somebody unique but an influx of "different people" scares them.

Here, I am in the minority and unlike the minorities in the States I feel welcome despite my differences. I treat people with respect and honor and they treat me the same way. Back home if you meet a man with a dark skin dressed in "homie" style you wouldn't even meet his eyes. Here I feel comfortable looking him in the eye and greeting him with a cheerful "Hi!" Back home women with dark skins stare at you, if they look at you at all, with a smoldering anger in their eyes. Here they are bolder and happy. There is little anger to be seen here. It is not nonexistant. It is just not directed.